TNF Recap Texans-Colts & NFL Network's Cynthia Frelund

pick it up? He cannot play made by Scarlett and Brissette mark short of first down yardage in the Texans will take over. Those were our good friends, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. I'm Greg Rosenthal with Chris whistling again. On Thursday night, the Texans wrapped up a twenty to seventeen victory over the Colts, which might just mean we're watching Deshaun Watson in that first Saturday ESPN Wild Cards slate because I think the a f C South is only getting one playoff team and the Texans are in

first place at seven and four. There was a really tight game that could have gone either way and it was such a uh I guess showcase for the different styles, distinct styles of play that really UM channels their quarterbacks with DeShawn Watson going for the big play, hitting those long air yards play UM and you see the difference. I think Will Fuller and t Y Hilton were the

two like injured wide receiver X factors. Will Fuller goes for seven and a hundred and forty I think, and t Y Hilton had those two third down almost catches that were big but didn't really wasn't much of a factor. Outside of that, Texans receivers dominated the game. Cultur receivers really didn't show up. No, that was the difference to me was Fuller in Hilton and then the guys throwing them the ball. You know, Hilton drops those two plays on a night where the Colts moved the ball pretty well,

but they're gonna move it slowly. There weren't many possessions in this game. The first was just a clear drop and the second one again in in a second half where they only had the ball four different times. He ended two drives with two drops. He was not explosive. If you're not beating Jonathan Joseph one on one in man coverage. That's not the t Y Hilton that we're used to seeing, Whereas will Fuller had all the juice. And yeah, I'm not saying he's better than DeAndre Hopkins.

He's not. You know, Nuke win for six, nine, four and two. He had a long touch a couple of long touchdowns, and a great sideline catch. But will Fuller's kind of the X factor. He's the little sizzle. He's the little ingredient. You know, when you're back on the big green egg, you know you gotta have your piece of steak. That's that's Watson and Nuke. But Fuller's that little ingredient that the only West Ads that puts it all together and actually makes it special. We we've talked

about how much he means to this offense. That Deshawn's Watson's numbers are like best in the league when Will Fullers in the lineup and just plain average without him. And I saw next Gen Stats said that he's more than twice as likely to throw a deep ball with will Fuller on the field as he is when will Fuller sideline. It's all the difference in the world for

this offense, well there. They were one of the worst teams in the league throwing vertically this year, which is crazy because you know, if you watched this game, you saw three of the prettiest deep balls that you'll ever see, the two to Fuller and then the second touchdown to Hopkins. The the only touchdown they got, you know, until that uh fourth quarter plate to Hopkins was on a total blown coverage. I actually thought the Colts defense, for the most part, did a good job. They stuffed to run

most of the night. Hide and Duke Johnson had one good run each. But this looked like, you know, a game that was very even. It's just like, how are you gonna win? Are you gonna win throwing the ball, or are you're gonna win trying to run the ball down the other team's throats. The two Colts touchdown drives on one of them came off of a Deshaun Watson interception seven straight runs. The other one they ran the ball ten out of eleven times. And it's just a

fine line. Jacobe Brisett did not look right. I don't know if they changed their game plan based on how he's playing or if he is just moving slow, but he certainly seemed to be like processing slow and not getting rid of the ball. And I saw some comments the Colts aren't winning in man coverage. Jacoby has gotta go give him, give him a chance, and I thought this was one of his worst games. He didn't look healthy.

I mean, if you're throwing for five yards per attempt against this Texans defense who was missing almost their entire starting secondary, that that's a problem. Well, the Colts entered this game in passing yards per game and fourth in rushing yards per game. This is who they are. And I think if I try to get in the mind of Frank Reich, that game plan was not only is this who they are, but I've got a banged up quarterback who isn't moving quite as well, and also have

a very depleted wide receiver corps. I can't count on them to win down field. So I'm gonna saddle up Jonathan Williams again. And it worked for for those two draws you talked about. It really worked when they imposed their will for two drives. But the bottom line is Frank Breich decided to live and die with the running game, and he died with it. I mean, you're you're gonna die.

But against against the defense where the clear weakness is the secondary, one of the worst secondaries in the nf I mean, at one point this, uh you know, was something that John McClain tweeted that the venerable Texans Houston Chronicle reporter after that first touchdown that that Colts running drive. The Colts have taken the Texans manhood. The offensive line is humiliating the Texans front seven. Time for them to

call their mommies. I want to see DJ Reader and Whitney Merciless and and uh, you know, face John McClain tonight in the locker room and say, you know, hey, hey, we called our mommies. We got some stops down the stretch. I love John McClain because he was so nice to me when I did the Love You Blue article the long form I did. But I do think he leans into it a little bit on these nationally televised game And though he's just getting emotional, you think he knows

everybody's watching his Twitter on these games. Yeah, that might be part of it. The Jacoby Brisset injury though, I mean, he's wearing that huge brace and on you know, one of the key plays of the game, it's a fourth and seven. He drops back to pass again, he doesn't

pull the trigger. Maybe maybe no one's open on that play, but he has a lane to go pick up seven yards and most starting quarterbacks are gonna pick up those seven and he picks up six and he's moving slowly, and even if he doesn't have that brace on, it's like, I think he's picking up that that first down on most nights, And that was that was a differ friends, And he's about a yard short and you don't know

what's gonna happen. Then I totally agree. I think I've seen Jacoby Brissette make that play when he's healthy, and he could have also been more decisive and taken off a couple of seconds earlier and maybe had a better window. But you know, I look at this game and I see a Texas team that's gonna be riding high because they're in first place. That was a huge game. You know,

they were calling it a playoff game. But the Colts you get, don't hang your head too too far, because next week you're you might have Devin Funchius in Paris Campbell back, t Y Hilton and Jacoby Prisette will presumably be a little bit more healthy. Uh, they were playing in the secondary without a couple of impact rookies and Rocky Scene and Cary Willis. Maybe those guys come back.

They were They were a depleted team on the field tonight, and I think that was reflected in the result a close game where if they're healthy, it might have gone differently. Your your heart, your football heart is a very strange thing. You know. You were not into the Colts early in the seas, and I wouldn't say they've exactly lit the

world on fire over the last month. In fact, they've lost three games out of four now, and yet watching this game with you at your house, I was pleasantly surprised to see that that you're a fan of the Colts suddenly once again. Well, their defense got me back in there. They're so young, they were playing four rookies regularly before those injuries, and they're fast to the ball. Uh, their pass rush did not show up tonight. That was

a big factor. But I like watching their defense, and I went into the game kind of subconsciously rooting for them. But by the end of the game, it was such a close game that it didn't bother me to see either team. Here's here's my take away, though I'm not sure how dangerous the Texans are. I know Deshaun Watson is great, and tonight you saw a lot of what made him great with the deep ball and the throws on third down. But you also saw, you know, one

interception that set up the Colts touchdown. You saw two interceptions that were dropped by the Colts, including what could have been a killer one in the fourth quarter, and he saw him fumble the ball in a situation at the end of the game we should talk about where the only thing that Texans had to do was not fumble. There in any fumble the ball, and the officials determined that he recovered the ball, and Twitter and everyone else was fired up that how could they not review that play?

And it does look strange. I get it. We rewound, you know, the TV copy, and the official that's standing right on top of Deshaun Watson and had a better view than anywhere says it's Watson's ball, So he seemed to indicate that there was a fumble, and he indicated that Watson recovered the ball. And people are gonna kill them for not reviewing that. But I don't know, there's like, you can't overturn that. There are rules, and the rule is like, you can't overturn that unless there's gonna be

some sort of clear recovery. And you're not gonna get a clearer view than that. I know, you know, I'm gonna get called the company man here. This was and I don't think there was some controversy there. That's just it was what it was. There was. We never saw another view that showed that the Colts recovered. And if the guy standing on top of him says Watson's got the ball, what are you gonna do? You can't overturn that.

I think they keep this purposely vague about when river Ron can just buzz him from New York and tell officials, hey, here's what happened. And my guess is in that situation said recovered that late in the game. River Ron buzzes in and says, hey, we got nothing here. There's nothing on on the replays that will overturn this. The Colts have the Titans bucks at at New Orleans home for Carolina at Jacksonville. That's a pretty good schedule, you know, the only game where they play a team with a

winning record. The rest of the way is at New Orleans. The Texans, on the other hand, don't play, by the way. Neither of these teams play until December one. You want a little hey, this season is moving along again. Their next game is December one, and it's a home game on Sunday night against the Patriots. Then they have the Broncos at Titans at Bucks, and back home to the Titans. So they get the Titans two out of three times down the stretch. If I'm the Colts and I'm looking

at that schedule, I don't feel too bad. You know, the Patriots, they both have one really tough game, and then they both have a bunch of toss up games. The Texans don't look unbeatable to me, But the Texans to me, are just a more dangerous team. But as as a home as a Patriots homer, I gotta say I expected to be really afraid of this Texans team. And maybe they will get better offensively over the next

few weeks. They certainly passed protect pretty well. They're they're pretty complete offensively, but the defense to me, lacks so much juice. I don't know if they're really gonna be a that dangerous of and out even if they win the division. Yeah. I agree that Texans have a higher ceiling because of their quarterback and their stars on offense, but they also have a fatal flaw in that secondary, and the Colts don't really have a fatal flaw. Their

ceiling just isn't that hot. Some some cold fans I follow in the timeline that are not fans of Jacoby Bersett with I would disagree with you saying they're limited by the QB. I think he can play better in tonight. I don't think he's a complete liability like the Texan secondary is. Well, you know who else is, uh, you know, not a complete liability. Dan Hansas, Mark Sessler, Cynthia Freeland, they're all our friends and uh we got together a little earlier today West and um, we wanted to get

inside the mind. I learned a lot from this interview. I learned a lot. And Cynthia, I've been kind of intimidated by what she's going on with with her with her models there. Well, she's she's an intimidating figure, but apparently she was intimidated by us. She thought she thought

we didn't like her. We get we get into that, we get into the personal thing and I and like I said on our preview show, if you haven't listened to this, I think this is setting up, you know, a character that we're going to have on in the future because I think that sort of analytical mindset UH is an interesting vantage point to get on the show. And I'm sure we'll have her down the line. But I'm excited UH to throw it over to Dan and

in us UH to hear from Cynthia. So here you go, all right, as promised a special guest in the studio. She's become a friend of the podcast. She doesn't think so she leaves herself to be a foe to some of us. It's Cynthia Freelan. Welcome to the Around the NFL podcast for the first time. You know, it only took what this is my fourth season here. I think you guys hated me or I mean, now you're two of you are forced to work with me on a regular basis, so it's really broken the ice. But I

thought you hated me. Let's dig into this a little bit because yes, the same way to start out there. Yeah, I love this because Cynthia, I work on the Power Ranking show on Wednesday's, which you catch on YouTube or NFL dot Com at New and Eastern. Also, Cindy works with Greg Rosenthal on Game Debut, which is also a digital and that shows up on NFL Network over the weekend. So, yeah, we've gotten to know you better. But Greg, before we throw it to the Kissing Cousins, did you ever have

any negative feelings towards towards No, that's present. I think you saying that you thought we hated you says more about you than it really really does about us. You know what, we run into issues I think because we don't really have many guests on the show in general. There are people that we've worked with a lot longer if I had, if I had to go through it,

that we probably you know, have alienated. Well, No, I know you have something personal with Mark that's weird, But like the rest of us, I thought I would trust your instinct instincts on what is So where did the yeah with West and Mark specifically, where did things go Wrong's? I don't know where it went wrong. I just like we don't spend a lot of time, you know, It's it's just it's one of those to where it's like, well,

I just don't think they like me very much. Well, you seem very busy from the to an outsider's for you, So it's like, you know, it's it's more about it's a Cynthia thing. Different NFL Network shows. I need number fourteen or else it's not going to be complete. We have Cynthia Freeland quotes hanging in my house. Well I

didn't think you hated me. Let's thank you Cynthia all all but I pinched hit on the game debut set last week, and Cynthia all but beat Greg and I officially because Cynthia is a woman that gets what she wants. She's been doing it her whole career. She and that's why she's Uh, you know, your background is analytics, um, and you become the go to person in this building, in that realm, and you're you're famous, I would say, but when there's only one of you, you're inherently the best,

the worst, and the most average. Now I mentioned this is my like rendering of your fame. As I mentioned, I was doing the show you Know with you and and Andrew Hawkins, and my dad immediately was like, oh, I know, Cynthia freelan and I was like, he doesn't watch any NFL network on the Sunday morning Game Day show. And now I'm not saying I want this, but one of my favorite things were going back. I go way back with Ian rap report, and I know I know

his personality. Anytime we hire a reporter that's good. He gets very worked up. He gets nervous, he gets agitated, he's worried that they're going to get his insider corner. Uh. And sometimes his concerns are more, you know, worth merit than others. Uh. Do you have any concerns that someone else can come in from the outside a budd buzz light Year to your woody. I look, I'm like fully expecting it because that's just what happens, right, So I

think it'd be really nice. Actually, if somebody else wanted to like do a lot of math and coming, then I'll you know, I'm like I already had. I was an investment bankery, did some other stuff, right, so I'll just go find something. I don't know. I guess it's like it's good. It's a compliment, right, It's a good thing to have. I'm not gonna get worked up. I actually want more people to come do what I do. You do a lot of things. You're a renaissance woman.

I will say this too. What I just looked over your press release when you're hired by never embarrassing anybody else got a press release when actually I mean I was hired a three day a week ten percentially, So I don't I don't think that document will be clear. Let's be clear. I don't you know your big time if they tell you when things are renewed, that ain't nobody tell you when I'm renewed. That's when you know you're really That's what Colleen will, by the way, which

is great. I have not said that on the show. Congratulations to college extension. I'm sure in the millions, and she deserves every sentence. So she is a star and we love you Colleen. Anyway, So when you were hired, it says here that you had completed this is four years ago, twenty marathons in twenty different states, almost halfway to her goal of completing a marathon in each state. Where are we at and based on your number, I'll let you know if you're doing well or poorly in

the last four years. Yeah, now falling behind base, I know is it. I don't even know if we're on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Just you know, as good as yours at math, I am as bad on the opposite direction. So the best part about math is you could like say it and for the most part almost no one will know, so you could just you know, like you can just say it like who cares, right, like good advice. You know I won't. I'm not going

to call you about we've become friends now. Maybe before having me on the pot, I would have called you out right Now, your math's perfect for me, so that Yeah, so you're twenty three months that's good. You're also what I've learned, Um, you know everybody. You're one of those people to the point where it becomes market negative. I think because she can't say anything bad about anybody because

she's quote unquote friends with everybody. Not early friends are very right, Like I I don't like I know them. That doesn't mean have friends with them. Jump in with your comments on that, well, I don't have a comment. I mean I feel that you you know, that's a good way to operate. I don't know almost more than four percent of the people in the building, so coming from a very different place. I have lots of questions, but we'll get through the intro. Let's get through. Let's

dig through the at the bullet points. There we are. We are in and around the NFL. Yes, we're kind of an insular group on the podcast, and I think, good job by you again by badgering Greg and I almost to the point of physicality to get on the show. It was not Mike too, so like other people are listening to, Oh, I looked, I was like, found my camera perfectly. Did you watch the replay? Because I like I nailed that right, like look right down the lens

and like nailed it. Because we hear from I have a specific shadowy League figure that has come to me and said, x Y and Z are unhappy they're not getting on the show. That's the thing that's happening in this building. Well it depends who X Y and Z are. But yeah, I like the figure name x Y and Z. Yes, Wow, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I mean I just went to sorry, Steve Wis, it's been a few months down, buddy,

We'll bring it back. Let's be honest. I all I wanted, like I went directly to I didn't go through any shadowy figures. I went right. I went right to you guys. That's advice you can give Daniel Jeremiah help. I'll tell dj alright, the introduction process, Mark is over. I just

I you know, I hear a lot. I hear a lot of times about uh, your your I've imagine you up in your apartment wherever you live, with some sort of gigantic, uh computerized motherboard where you're running through all these facts and figures like I grew up playing uh like strat o matic, which to me tied at a very early age concept of football. Well it is. I feel like I'm in the presence of a fellow nerd

potentially to some degree which I appreciate. And I just wonder, like, are you spending all day long, like just hitting this motherboard up for these facts and figures. I just want to see what it looks like visually or is it just a lot? What What is your program that you're running these games on when you put all of these predictions. It's called you called the model. Is it like it is? I don't know if it's a robot or if it's some sort of wall size type thing. I don't know it. Yeah,

I feel like I need answers. I think a lot of people would, in their own mind would wonder what it tame. Okay, so you imagine, like like I can, I'll take a picture of it. But there's several screens, so I have a multiple monitor and I run different things on each one. So imagine taking your game pass, feeding in all of the all of the coaches film because you have to see all the players, and then it draws like circles and lines and squares like it's you know how the the yellow line that shows you

where the first down is. It's kind of the same ideas. That's it's computer vision. That's the thing that makes me special. It's the only thing. And you invented this, well, I wrote my own covert. A computer vision allows you to create the lines. I just say what do I want to measure? So that's that's the that's part of what I do. And then it's taking all those things and like looking for trends and doppelgangers, if you will keep it in our word reference. Of course, I live in

that realm, so it's my realm too. So it's but it's like, what what are similarities. What are similarities? So is this defense operating like the eighty five Bears? Right? Like we saw a lot of comparisons this week between the Patriots current defense and the five Bears? So is that true? Yes or no? Did they operate against pressure with a lot of pressure or is it more the

coverage from the back end? Like how? Because how a defense is effective is different, right, Like it either nets and points or it doesn't, but how it operates can be different, so you can't really compare, you know, like like we talked about home run hitters in in baseball, right, Like if you want to talk about how uh Barry Bonds you say him, maybe it's not a good one, but right, But you know, you can use these like sluggers with like a lot of power, or you can

use it kind of like single and double hitters. Right, So you can't say yes, both get you know, have high on base percentages or things like that. But you what you want to see how they're doing it. Are they doing with power or are they doing it with you know, more efficiency? So and that's what you look for in football. What are the dopplic doppelgangers? So what about how does how is that all fed into what the model is to then predict like game scores each

So you know how you like? Open up Microsoft Excel so like Excel looks like you ros right, Okay, Well, if you'd like to, it's on your computer. I'm pretty sure his columns and rows and basically that's that's a that's a program. That's a computer program. So I've written a program for my stuff that takes in a lot of different inputs and it doesn't look like Excel, but

it's it operates like Excel. I ask it to do some stuff and it gives me a result kind of like Excel does if you were going to use it to create a spreadsheet for like your household income, right like like what you're doing around the house. So I created us the software that pulls in all these different data components and makes it so that I can visualize it so that I can use it to predict different things. And by the way, there are more than one model.

There's multiple models, and they're all named after like old school rappers. Let's hear well, do you like sure? Okay? I feel like he's lying to me right now. Lots of music. I don't like being pigeonholed, and how did you know that? Greg doesn't like it's not ironic. She she makes a lot of like noise about Oh yeah, I don't you know. I don't think you guys like me haven't been on the podcast. She's never listened to the podcast. That is completely untrue that she's building multiple

high octane models. So I put on my headphones and I listened to some of my favorite podcasts, of which in okay, so I'm I like like I'm a tribe called quest kind of girl every time, like every once in a while, get mad at once, so like I'll name something like a little bit like like easy. Sometimes you love him, sometimes you hate him, stuff like they're you know like and obviously my favorite all time Christopher Wallace, which obviously is notorious b I g but you gotta

his mother. You gotta go with what his mother nads him, so you gotta. So those are three of my favorites. Like the one that I referenced every week on our show is Christopher Wallace the Motherboard. Oh I get it, Okay, So to pick the games, let's let's just in terms of your model and the two thousand nineteen season, because We do talk about this a lot on the Power Ranking Show. Some teams don't whether there where the record is, where they're now rative is connected to them doesn't always

drive up with where the model has them. What is a team that all season remains high up when you're talking about the best teams in the league that perhaps has been bouncing up and down the standings or in the view of the general public. So you know how like you always want to buy blue chip stocks, like you're gonna take an Apple stock. Maybe there's a down day or whatever, but like you're gonna take that blue chip stock to me, like the Kansas City Chiefs although

they've had some down moments. The Chiefs and the Patriots are those two blue chip stocks there, You're Amazon your Apple that they're going to remain high even if there's some dips in temporary kind of like day trading, temporary dips. You want you want me to continue this? No? I like? But so the blue chip teams Pats the Chiefs even though they've lost games this year, and they lost a

lot of games at home. And a big part of your model, the Christopher Wallace model, is the importance of getting a bye week in the playoffs when you're talking about Super Bowl probability, because then you remember, like if you think about it, if you if you kind of add together. So let's say tonight, so for the for the Thursday night game, right, like you, let's say there's like a fifty six, Like the winner is fifty six wins and fifty of the simulations. So the loser, what's

the math there? Perfect, This is your backup if you go down. This is your backup on this stuff. That's right, pretty good, Like you're in the cloud. Now, let's go, let's put you in the cloud. Hands is in the cloud? Get so then you add to don't so not too late. So then you add together all the remaining like each game has those probabilities, so you add together those remaining

ones to get the wind total. So if you think about it, if your wind totals are out of if like fifty six, then becomes one if you win or zero if you lose. But if you don't have that roll of the dice in the playoffs, then your number becomes like you have six games to play it out of instead of seven games to play it out of.

So no matter what, you're going to be better off with a buy like, you know, even if it's that's why, it's just always more improbable, even if the better team that you think is better is not seated as highly and adversely and using that you know kind of parlance the blue chip stock, what's the opposite of that. I don't know that. Well, there's like like, look like you had a blue chip stock overvalued right now there's a little overvalued. Oh see, that's that's a good way that's overvalued. Yeah,

so they're like stuck. I think you're probably looking at I mean, to be honest with you, We'll see, we'll see here. But I'm I'm curious what happens between this San Francisco and Green Bay game. One of those seems to be a bit I'm gonna say, maybe like a trading a little higher than maybe they should. I'm not saying their potentialist. I think the I think the loser of this one was maybe a little over is maybe now looking back, would be a little overvalued, right, Like

you could argue, you could argue either way. Right San Francisco, you think about their defense, and then there we have a lot of questions on their offense. But then you've got Green Bay, and you're what's going on with their defense their offense. Aaron Rodgers always seems to give them a chance, so they could be a bit overvalued in terms of like super Bowl potential. And question on on these models, they obviously do so many things. I thought

they were mostly numbers. You're telling me these models watch it, analyze game film every every single game. Well, I mean I won't be needed on this podcast any I watch it too, right. Like the point is is you want to have an I want to create an unbiased way, like I watched every single game too, right, But I'm biased, just like your biased. We're all biased, we no matter what, Like you can't not be bias your human being, right, some people are more biased than others, Like if you

if you ask um. I used to ask Marshall Falk for help on certain things with running backs and picking up blitz is, and Marshall has a huge bias on running backs pick but he can't help it because that's Marshall, Like that's what he did, Like that's his area of expertise. So you have to learn how to take what Marshall told me and make that like something that helps, right as opposed to something that like makes me more biased.

So when you measure things, and you measure actual distances from stuff, then you can say, hey, Aaron Donald is still getting within five ft of a quarterback. And by the way, we came up with that because when I was talking to coaches, it's like, most quarterbacks are about six ft tall, so their wingspans about six ft, so five inside of that your visions and thirty five degrees most people. So as long as like if your head's turning, but a defenders in your face, probably a good way

to approximate pressure. So that's just to be more specific than like, oh they got through the old line, Okay, like does that did they really like did they have an effect? I don't know. So trying to like make things so that it's formulaic in a way where like if I just handed you the recipe, you could cook the cookies too, you can bake the cookies. I'm starting to think none of us are needed on this podcast.

These robots that are that that are trained for war. Now, I mean, this is all happened, It's gonna be easy. But here's the thing. The better you the better your inputs, the better your output. So like coming up with that formula. You have to ask people who know so that you can come and then, by the way, you gotta keep making it better because the game evolves and the game changes,

like everything changes. So the point is to just do it kind of quickly so you can do these like what if scenarios or make decision trees, but based on really smart mind. So like that, you're actually more valuable because then you become the person who informs what the robots looking for. The robot can just look through way more years of data faster than you because they don't have to category especially. I mean, you didn't have to go there. But it's the old it's the old Tom

Brady scouting report thing too. I'm going to lean on here. The one ding they couldn't measure was right here. Okay, it's hot. You must have teams um reaching out trying to pull you away from NFL network and into their building as a singular employee. Ye oh, that's how you get paid names. I want names. I want organizations. Have you consulted with any teams they do? I actively consult with teams, But you don't hear about multiple income streams. Tell us get into that okay, So we got an annuity.

And then it's the end of year, so you gotta consider what you're gonna be doing with your tax status. So we're in California, you gotta go make some donations. You're gonna pay a lot of tack. Smart aren't smart? So no, But what the what I like to do? The best team look just like everything else. If I'm listening to you and you're listening to me, and we

can come up with something better together. I don't know, Like I know a bunch of people who like do like analytics or they say I don't even know what that word means anymore. But it's not a project, like they're just saying. They're just saying things. I see them on Twitter all the time. In fact, many times I have to throw my phone. My phone is always broken because I cannot stand looking at because these takes are

so crappy. Like, of course you're gonna be better at passing the ball if you have Michael Thomas on your team. Then if you don't, like, I saw a whole thing this summer, and I don't care if this person listens and gets mad at me, But this whole thing I'm saying I'm a Lions fan, and they were saying that the Lions um were worse at passing now and because they've been trying to be a run first team. As it turns out, it's a tiny sample size, and you

know what, it's better. It's easier to pass if Calvin Johnson's on your team then if he's not, like these are ridiculous, like these are ridiculous, like takes right. So instead it's like when I work with the team last year, I was asked by team to come up with an analysis of three or four, but three primary running backs that they think they could afford in this tier that's not a premier tier of running back. So back up,

these are the Jets. No, it wasn't um. It was not the Jets, I will tell you that, But it's it's how do we how do we value these three things? And it was like, so I sat down with coach and I said, well, what kind of offense are you going to run? Is it going to be different? Like, what what is your strategy? What are the things you're

prioritizing for? And all I did then was I organized everything that he said into categories and then analyze each of the running backs that they asked me about into those categories and made some cut ups because coaches speaking cut ups. Put it into biggie smalls and see what happens.

And that was that was a different one. That was, yeah, I know it's these names are no no, no, but but you know, but exactly like you know, you put it in there and out with it just gives it like a great like this one's an eight out of ten. Or here the five clips that are exactly what you're looking for. Here are the five cut ups that are not what you're looking for. And here the five that I have no idea how to explain, but you should probably look at as a coach. Alright, So it's really helpful.

Two things we focused. We gotta let Cynthia go. Two things we need to hit real quick. One, be careful with this with the With how much information pump into it, it becomes self aware. You've seen the terminator terminator franchise. Oh I know, sometimes it scares me. What it tells me AI is like legit. Just so you're saying the person, you know, the thing that could come into the company and replace Cynthia would be her own creation. That's what I'm saying exactly, And that could be the least of

your problems. She could replace you, It could replace you. And always you're saying you're a great cook in the kitchen. Be careful how much information and pump into its hardware. Embrace the change it's going to happen. No, you just gotta be better than I told you the formula. You just have to be the one informing what it's looking at. Couldn't magine that? Te last thought, last thought, because we've got to get to our previous show. Here, the model says,

who wins the super Bowl? Right now? The Patriots? Come on, yeah, but what's the percentage? It's right? See, that's the thing is people I saw yesterday on Twitter this it was like, alright, I'm making you know, it's like hot take alert. It's like this ex athlete says, the Patriots are done. They

are not winning the super Bowl this year. And I'm thinking, and I'm thinking, well, the most optimistic assessment that the Patriots are the favorites in the NFL would say that they're not winning the super Bowl because no team would have a greater than fifty chance to win the Super Bowl. Her favorite is that because stuff put We like the buttons on our show, don't we. I mean, look, it goes right now. It's Patriots, Ravens. What was third Chiefs, Chiefs,

Patriot Ravens, Chiefs Saints. That was it. That's the button. It feels like you should be doing power rankings, but I'll leave it there. She does. She's more real on the field. Thanks for having me, Um, all right, Cynthia Freeland. Check her out on all different NFL network programming. And thank you for coming on the show. You know, thanks for having me as any enemies in the room, Marks like fellow nerds, all right, Cynthia Freeland, all right, that

was Cynthia and uh the rest of us. You know, I thought we all did well in that interview, West, but you really stood out to me, Like what you're really, um incisive, You're an incisive guy. See I thought the opposite that she obviously has a natural rapport with you and Dan from being on shows with her, whereas Mark and I were kind of left of the circle a little bit. Uh. You know, well, what can I say. We've been working together. It's uh, it's been a lot

of fun. People should check out, you know, If you're making it this deep into the Thursday night recap show and the interview with Cynthia, you're a real football head, you're a real fan, and uh, I think you'll enjoy game debut. Uh think nine a m. And midnight Eastern time on Saturdays. You can d v R and then watch it with your kids anytime until then, though, West, we we should get out of here. Let's get okay. They're going for Chris and Dan and Mark and Cynthia

and the wonderful Ericatan Posey behind the glass. We will talk to you ascenday m